No wise person will marry for beauty mainly. It may exercise a powerful attraction in the first place, but it is found to be of comparatively little consequence afterwards. Not that beauty of person is to be underestimated, for, other things being equal, handsomeness of form and beauty of features are the outward manifestations of health. But to marry a handsome figure without character, fine features unbeautified by sentiment or good-nature, is the most deplorable of mistakes. As even the finest landscape, seen daily, becomes monotonous, so does the most beautiful face, unless a beautiful nature shines through it. The beauty of to-day becomes commonplace to-morrow; whereas goodness, displayed through the most ordinary features, is perennially lovely. Moreover, this kind of beauty improves with age, and time ripens rather than destroys it. After the first year, married people rarely think of each other's features, and whether they be classically beautiful or otherwise. But they never fail to be cognisant of each other's temper. "When I see a man," says Addison, "with a sour rivelled face, I cannot forbear pitying his wife; and when I meet with an open ingenuous countenance, I think of the happiness of his friends, his family, and his relations."We have given the views of the poet Burns as to the qualities necessary in a good wife. Let us add the advice given by Lord Burleigh to his son, embodying the experience of a wise statesman and practised man of the world. "When it shall please God," said he, "to bring thee to man's estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife; for from thence will spring all thy future good or evil. And it is an action of thy life, like unto a stratagem of war, wherein a man can err but once....
Enquire diligently of her disposition, and how her parents have been inclined in their youth. (9) Let her not be poor, how generous (well-born) soever; for a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility. Nor choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth; for it will cause contempt in others, and loathing in thee. Neither make choice of a dwarf, or a fool; for by the one thou shalt beget a race of pigmies, while the other will be thy continual disgrace, and it will yirke (irk) thee to hear her talk. For thou shalt find it to thy great grief, that there is nothing more fulsome (disgusting) than a she-fool."A man's moral character is, necessarily, powerfully influenced by his wife. A lower nature will drag him down, as a higher will lift him up. The former will deaden his sympathies, dissipate his energies, and distort his life; while the latter, by satisfying his affections, will strengthen his moral nature, and by giving him repose, tend to energise his intellect. Not only so, but a woman of high principles will insensibly elevate the aims and purposes of her husband, as one of low principles will unconsciously degrade them. De Tocqueville was profoundly impressed by this truth. He entertained the opinion that man could have no such mainstay in life as the companionship of a wife of good temper and high principle. He says that in the course of his life, he had seen even weak men display real public virtue, because they had by their side a woman of noble character, who sustained them in their career, and exercised a fortifying influence on their views of public duty; whilst, on the contrary, he had still oftener seen men of great and generous instincts transformed into vulgar self-seekers, by contact with women of narrow natures, devoted to an imbecile love of pleasure, and from whose minds the grand motive of Duty was altogether absent.
